Ushaw Moor & Broompark Community Newsletter / Summer 2015

Download the NEW Ushaw Moor Community Newsletter, News and events from Ushaw Moor and Broompark.

Nearly NEW – Bag A Bargain – Bobby Robson Centre 14th Sept.

Nearly NEW – Bag A Bargain – Bobby Robson Centre, Ushaw Moor, 2.15pm – 4pm, 14th September

Lots of baby and children’s clothes, toys, prams, cots and nursery equipment, all at bargain prices.

Refreshments business stands and much more !!

Ushaw Moor Action Group – The Hive

 

The Hive is a flexible place for people to meet, and enjoy a variety of activities and services for people of all ages living in Ushaw Moor. These activities will promote health, well being, intergenerational activity, access to services, social cohesion, and community safety.

The activities will cut across all ages, encourage engagement with key projects to continue throughout the year and showcase positive community action.

via. http://www.umag.org.uk/hive/

Ushaw Moor Chopsuey House – On Facebook

Ushaw Moor Chop Suey House – We serve the finest Chinese & English meals, we are open daily 6.00pm till 11.00pm (closed Tuesdays).

We regret that we do not deliver, collection only from our shop: 15 Station Road, Ushaw Moor, Durham, DH7 7PY.

To place an order please call us on Telephone Number: 0191 373 0528

Ushaw Moor Chopsuey House.

BBC News – Durham Business School role for Ushaw College

A Roman Catholic college in County Durham is to have a new role as a business school.

As home to St Cuthbert’s Seminary, Ushaw College trained entrants for the priesthood for more than 200 years.

Its closure in June 2011 led to fears about the future of the historic building, just outside Durham City.

Durham Business School will be based there temporarily during the multi million-pound development of its site on Mill Hill Lane.

The £16.6m rebuilding and expansion work is expected to take about two years.

Ushaw College can trace its roots back to Douai College, which was founded in 1568 in the Spanish Netherlands, now northern France.

BBC News – Durham Business School role for Ushaw College.

Top Marks – Your Local Bicycle Mechanic

Bicycle repair. Electric bike repair. Bicycle engineering. Bicycle Re-Cycle service.

TopMark’s Workshop is a free home-based maintenance and repair workshop dedicated to helping you get your bicycle back on track. All you need to do to take full advantage of this service is make a small donation. Donations start from £5 for basic repairs to £10 for more advanced repairs. (This excludes parts) all I ask in return is that you give generously as the money you donate will help towards the building and running of a workshop and in return for your generous donation you will have your bike serviced or repaired.

Check it OUT here topmarks1.wordpress.com

Ushaw Moor Community on Streetlife

A new social networking site that’s geared towards your local area, use this to chat about stuff happening in Ushaw Moor.

It can be community issues,crime, selling your stuff, events in fact anything you want to chat about.

Streetlife makes it easy to connect and share with your neighbours.

From Streetlife.com vid on youtube.

Social networking has changed the world, but to be honest, it can be a little…frivolous. Which is fun now and again, but trying to find someone local to talk about something meaningful can be frustrating. Say you want to meet like-minded people nearby, or share skills and possessions? What if you’ve got important news to tell your neighbors, or you want to volunteer in your local community? Knocking on doors is awkward, you never have time to talk over the garden fence, and your social network’s no use, because it only connects you with people you already know. And they could live…ANYWHERE.

Epipheo Studios shows you how Streetlife gives you an easy way to find people nearby in the UK who care about the place you call home.

Sign up below.

via Ushaw Moor Community.

Video on Youtube telling you what it’s all about.

Parking limit a ‘victory for common sense’ From Durham Times

 

VILLAGERS have hailed a ‘victory for common sense’ after councillors banned motorists from parking on a shopping street for more than two hours.

Durham County Council’s highways committee approved the waiting restriction for the south side of Broom Lane, in Ushaw Moor, near Durham City, today.

Inconsiderate motorists leaving their vehicles on the street all day were threatening the viability of its shops, councillors were told.

Afterwards, Graham Kirkup, owner of G&S News, said: “I’m very pleased.”

John Booth, chairman of Ushaw Moor Action Group, said: “We’re absolutely delighted. It’s a victory for common sense.”

Ushaw Moor county councillor John Wilkinson said: “We can’t afford anymore shops to close in Ushaw Moor.”

The restrictions will apply from Monday to Saturday, 8am to 6pm.

The proposals met with widespread public support during a consultation, although there were seven objections; with some people saying there were no problems in the area and others saying the limit should be longer than two hours.

Coun Jean Chaplow told yesterday’s County Hall meeting that she was not against the plans but had ‘grave concerns’.

There were two hairdresser’s nearby where customers stayed for longer than two hours, she said.

“I’m afraid the first person to get a £70 fine won’t come back and use our shops – they’ll go to Langley Moor.”

Coun Chaplow also questioned whether shoppers would walk from a nearby car park off Station Road and how the council would enforce the changes.

David Battensby, a council highways official, said there would still be unlimited parking available on the north side of Broom Lane and enforcement would be by a council contractor.

Coun Wilkinson said: “Without these parking measures, I’m convinced that another general dealer’s will close in Ushaw Moor. What’s going to happen if there are no real shops?

“Ushaw Moor is the largest village in the Deerness Valley. It deserves this parking scheme.”

Coun Paul Stradling asked whether a decision could be postponed to find a solution acceptable to all.

However, Coun Carol Woods said it was important to support local businesses and suggested approving the scheme, with monitoring.

The changes were approved unanimously.

FROM Durham Times

Parking limit a ‘victory for common sense’ From Durham Times.

Troubled Durham off-licence to sell booze again From Durham Times

ALCOHOL is to again be sold from a village store previously stripped of its off-licence for selling drinks to under-age youngsters.

Durham County Council revoked the off-licence of Lazer News and Video, on Broom Lane, Ushaw Moor, in July 2009 after it twice failed ‘test purchases’ by police-supervised under-age volunteers.

Residents claimed the store attracted anti-social behaviour including drunkenness, shouting and swearing, verbal abuse and youths urinating in nearby streets.

The store’s then-owner, Ajay Kumar Nayyar, withdrew an appeal against the decision in November 2009.

Last week, new operator Lokugamage Rohitha Jathunarachchi persuaded councillors to issue a new off-licence for the premises, now known as Ushaw Moor Convenience Store.

Durham County Council’s statutory licensing sub-committee granted a licence for the sale of alcohol from 7am to 10pm, seven days a week.

The application attracted opposition from neighbours and a nearby business.

Twenty-five residents of High View signed a petition objecting to the bid, warning its approval would lead to problems of abuse and anti-social behaviour returning again. Ushaw Moor Action Group also raised concerns.

via Troubled Durham off-licence to sell booze again From Durham Times.

Reprieve hope for leisure centres – Deerness Leisure Centre

THREE of six council-run leisure centres threatened with closure look likely to be saved, The Northern Echo can reveal.

Durham County Council chiefs will today recommend the closure of centres in Ferryhill, Crook and Sherburn, after concluding that none of the five bids to take over the running of the struggling facilities could be supported.

However, they will back further negotiations over Deerness Gymnastics Club’s plans to reopen Deerness Leisure Centre, in Ushaw Moor, as a gymnastics academy and a community bid to save the leisure centre at Coxhoe.

Abbey Leisure Centre, at Pity Me, looks likely to survive as a council-run facility with reduced opening hours.

Final decisions will be taken by the council’s cabinet next Wednesday.

The Deerness bid had been widely expected to win council support. But officials’ backing for the Future Leisure campaign in Coxhoe, which is supported by Coxhoe Parish Council, comes as a surprise after serious concerns were raised ten days ago.

The council now says it is “hopeful that, with more work, the bid can be moved forward”.

Pity Me’s facility is expected to survive after the council discovered a covenant agreement requiring it should continue as a sports facility until at least 2014. To cut costs, it will only be open at peak times.

The Labour-run council, which faces £125m of spending cuts over four years, including £67m this year, says closing all six leisure centres would save £1.3m a year, while selling the sites would raise about £3m.

Officials say all the authority’s leisure centres are lossmaking and it has more centres per head of population than neighbouring councils.

A 12-week public consultation on the closures ended in May, leading to ten groups submitting 19 takeover bids.

However, the only private company involved in the process, which wanted to run all six, withdrew after concluding they could not be run at a profit.

That left 13 bids from nine community-based groups.

Spectrum Leisure and Management, which runs Spectrum Leisure Centre, in Willington, bid for Sherburn, Coxhoe, Ferryhill and Pity Me, with other community bids for Crook, Sherburn and Pity Me.

While council officials say the bids for Deerness and Coxhoe meet the legal criteria regarding the transfer of staff and satisfy the requirement that the takeovers be at zero cost to the council, they have expressed concerns over the other submitted business plans.

These include supposedly over-ambitious income predictions, reliance on non-existent council funding and a failure to take account of employment law.

Speaking about all the recommendations, Terry Collins, the council’s corporate director of neighbourhood services, said: “I am sure many people may have expected all six to close and it is testament to a great deal of hard work that that looks less likely.”

He added: “We think this is a really good result. We’ve taken this process extremely seriously. We’ve worked very hard to encourage people to make bids.

“We’ve had all the private sector walk away, which has demonstrated the difficulty of running these centres.

“But we’ve worked with the bidders to try to come up with arrangements to satisfy all the requirements.

“We have ended up with nearly 95 per cent of residents still within ten minutes’ drive of a council-run leisure centre.

“We appreciate the disappointment of those bidders that haven’t been successful and we want to thank them for their contribution.

“But we have a responsibility as a council to ensure those bidders that go forward are realistic and can meet all the requirements.”

If the proposals are endorsed by the authority’s cabinet, those leisure centres earmarked for closure could shut, and the Ushaw Moor and Coxhoe centres be handed over to new operators, by October.

Reprieve hope for leisure centres (From The Northern Echo).